Cargo Helicopter 0.18.0 — Configurable Economy

You asked, it's here: the economy is now editable in the mod settings, plus a rebalance and faster, tier-differentiated helicopters.

Editable economy (config.json / in-game mod settings)

Tune the mod to your taste — no file editing required, just open the mod's settings:

• Fuel consumption multiplier (0.1×–10×) — want realistic, thirsty helicopters? Crank it up. Want cheaper flying? Turn it down.
• Cargo capacity multiplier (0.25×–4×)
• Build time multiplier (0.25×–4×)
• Open Heliport T1 / T2 power draw (kW)

Change a value, reload your save, and it applies (the values are baked into the vehicle/building prototypes).

Economy rebalance (new defaults — all editable)

• Fuel: burn rate stays about 2× a truck of similar cargo — thirsty but fair, not punishing. Tanks are bigger, so refuel trips are ~30% less frequent.
• Build time is slightly longer, so a helicopter takes a bit more effort to field than the equivalent truck — keeping the vanilla balance intact.
• Capacity unchanged (40 / 90 / 180).

Faster, tier-differentiated helicopters

Helicopters are now quicker, and each tier is meaningfully faster than the last: 32 / 38 / 44 m/s (up from a flat-ish 28 / 32 / 36). They remain the fastest logistics option and still fly straight over water, cliffs and buildings.

​To be completely honest, this update was incredibly tough on me. I’ve been working on this mod for 20 hours a day, but despite all that effort, you might still encounter some bugs, janky animations, or other issues. If you find anything, please let me know—I’ll be patching things up as we go. Just keep in mind that some features or fixes are simply impossible to implement due to the game engine's limitations. Good luck to everyone, and enjoy the game!

New buildings: Open Heliport T1 and T2

The enclosed Heliport Complex hangar is retired. Helicopters now live on open-deck bases with painted parking stands, taxi lanes, final-assembly lines and a dedicated equipment yard:

• Open Heliport T1 — 20 parking stands, 5 equipment columns, 2 assembly lines. Costs 100 Construction Parts + 20 Iron, 100 kW. Unlocks with Vehicles & Mining, so helicopter logistics is available from the very start of a playthrough.
• Open Heliport T2 — 40 parking stands, 10 equipment columns, 4 assembly lines. Costs Vehicle Parts + Steel, 500 kW. Unlocks with Vehicle Assembly II.

Balance: bigger bases on purpose

The bases are much larger than the old hangar — that is a deliberate design decision, not bloat. The old compact building with nearly-free helicopters simply broke the game's economy: unlimited flying logistics for the price of a shed. The credo of my mods is to preserve the vanilla balance, so the trade-off moved into infrastructure: the helicopters themselves stay affordable (a Cargo Helicopter I costs about as much as a truck), but a serious fleet demands a serious commitment — a large flat footprint, power, and planning where this piece of airport infrastructure fits into your island. Small starter fleet on a T1 early, real air logistics hub on a T2 later — earned, like everything else in Captain of Industry.

Fleet & dispatch system (new)

• Every helicopter belongs to the base that built it and keeps a personal attachment (container, tank or log grapple) stored on the base's equipment columns while parked.
• The right attachment kind is picked — and swapped automatically — to match each job: fluids get the tank, logs get the grapple.
• Up to 5 helicopters operate the equipment yard concurrently on T1 and 10 on T2 — one per physical column, with a fair queue, spread-out holding points, and a landing order that favours whoever is actually near the base (a helicopter returning from across the map never blocks the ones already home).
• A new task that arrives while a helicopter still carries its attachment sends it straight back to work — no pointless "drop the container, pick it right back up" round trips.
• Parking stands free up the moment a departure starts, so arrivals can land immediately.
• Fleet capacity is honest: bases never overbuild past the world's total stand count. If a base is full, helicopters migrate to another base with room; with nowhere to park at all they set down on open ground and lift off again as soon as a seat opens.

Flight, speed & animation

• Speeds rebalanced from absurd (up to 84 m/s) to believable: helicopters remain clearly faster than any truck and still fly straight lines over water, cliffs and buildings — that is their advantage, not raw speed.
• Smooth, physical motion everywhere: eased climbs and descents, gentle touchdowns, measured hoist speeds, a rock-steady hover while the winch is placing or collecting a load, and honest travel times — recalled aircraft no longer teleport-dash across the map.
• Cargo is only exchanged once the slung load actually touches the ground.

Reliability & performance

• A fleet-recovery system watches every airborne helicopter: broken routes, unreachable targets, undeliverable cargo and stuck jobs are detected and the aircraft is recalled home instead of hovering forever. Old saves with helicopters frozen mid-air recover automatically after loading.
• Fixed a game-engine pathfinding assert storm triggered by long helicopter routes (thousands of log errors and visible simulation slowdown) — helicopter routes are now driven in bounded steps the engine accepts.
• Many crash/deadlock fixes around demolishing bases, scrapping aircraft, saving mid-flight and running multiple heliports at once.
• A once-per-minute fleet status line in the game log makes any remaining issue easy to report.

Upgrading from 0.8.x — READ THIS

• Your saves load. The old Heliport Complex building still exists and keeps its model, but it is deprecated: it no longer builds or services helicopters.
• Build an Open Heliport T1 or T2 — your existing helicopters will automatically adopt the new base and fly home to its stands. Until then, idle helicopters rest on open ground near their last job; that is normal and safe.
• Once the fleet has moved, demolish the old Heliport Complex whenever you like.
• Helicopters themselves, their cargo and your research are unaffected — all vehicle prototypes are unchanged.

Full technical changelog inside the archive (CHANGELOG.md).

New Building: Heliport ATC Complex

Some of the animations and models are currently placeholder/suboptimal and will be improved in future updates.

New model

Version 0.8.0 is a major expansion of the Cargo Helicopter mod.

The previous public version, 0.5.0, did not include the Heliport ATC Complex, helicopter production, hangar storage, landing queues, or the container storage platform. All of those systems are completely new in this update.

Major New Features

New Heavy-Lift Helicopter Model

The helicopter now uses a completely new civilian heavy-lift model inspired by the Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane.

The new model includes:

• A detailed civilian industrial design
• New cockpit, engines, landing gear, and external hoist frame
• A correctly sized six-blade main rotor
• Animated main and tail rotors
• A functional winch cable
• A detailed cargo spider, straps, and hook
• Separate attachment models for containers, liquid tanks, and logs
• A tightly retracted attachment position during flight
• Improved cargo positioning beneath the helicopter
• Three helicopter tiers with different capacities, speeds, and fuel tanks

New Building: Heliport ATC Complex

A completely new building has been added for producing, managing, and storing cargo helicopters.

The complex includes:

• A large main helipad
• A helicopter storage hangar
• Storage capacity for up to 20 helicopters
• An animated hangar roll door
• A dedicated elevated cargo platform called CY_Deck
• Two helicopter assembly elevators
• Two independent production bays
• Animated assembly-bay roof hatches
• An air traffic control tower
• Industrial lights and warning beacons
• Railings, walkways, service platforms, and structural supports

The building model was optimized from 788 separate mesh objects to only 9 renderers while keeping all required animated components.

Helicopter Production

Helicopters can now be manufactured directly inside the Heliport ATC Complex.

Production sequence:

1. A helicopter is constructed inside one of the two assembly bays.
2. The corresponding roof hatch opens.
3. The assembly elevator raises the helicopter.
4. The helicopter reaches the upper platform.
5. Its rotor reaches operating speed.
6. The helicopter takes off vertically.
7. It receives its transport assignment after clearing the building.

The two assembly bays alternate between production orders.

New Production Times

Helicopter production is now four times faster. Production times for other vehicles are unchanged.

Automated Storage for Idle Helicopters

Helicopters without an active assignment can now return to a Heliport ATC Complex.

Return sequence:

1. The helicopter selects an available heliport.
2. It receives a reserved airborne holding position.
3. It waits for its turn if the building is busy.
4. It flies to the cargo platform.
5. It places its attachment on its reserved storage slot.
6. It climbs above the building.
7. It follows an exterior route to the helipad.
8. It moves directly above the center of the pad.
9. It lands vertically.
10. The hangar door opens.
11. The helicopter taxis into the hangar.
12. It remains stored until a new assignment appears.

Each complex can store up to 20 helicopters.

Intelligent Multi-Heliport Distribution

When several Heliport ATC Complex buildings exist, idle helicopters are distributed between them.

The dispatcher considers:

• Distance to each heliport
• Available hangar capacity
• Current number of assigned helicopters
• Landing queue length
• Pad availability
• Departure queue
• Available holding positions

This prevents every idle helicopter from selecting the same building.

Airborne Landing Queue

The new heliport uses an automated FIFO landing queue.

• Every arriving helicopter receives a separate holding position
• Holding positions remain outside the building footprint
• Helicopters wait until the landing sequence becomes available
• Only one helicopter uses the cargo platform, helipad, and hangar door at a time
• Departing helicopters with an active assignment receive priority
• Helicopters no longer stack directly above the landing pad

This entire queue system is new in version 0.8.0.

Dedicated Container Platform

The Heliport ATC Complex includes a new elevated storage platform called CY_Deck.

It can display:

• Standard cargo containers
• Liquid tanks
• Log carriers

The platform supports 20 individually assigned attachments:

• A centered 2×2 ground layout
• Up to five vertical storage levels
• One reserved attachment for each helicopter
• Strict ownership between a helicopter and its storage slot

The parked attachment models are visual only. The system does not remove or modify the helicopter’s real Truck.Cargo.

Container Lowering System

The complete container-lowering system is new in version 0.8.0.

When an idle helicopter returns:

1. It flies to the exact center of its assigned cargo slot.
2. The attachment is aligned with the platform.
3. The winch lowers it vertically.
4. The bottom of the attachment is placed on the exact upper surface of CY_Deck.
5. If the attachment is stacked, it uses the actual upper surface of the model below.
6. A permanent static attachment model is created.
7. The suspended model remains visible until the static model is ready.
8. The suspended model is then hidden.
9. The cable, spider, straps, and hook retract.
10. Only after completing this sequence may the helicopter proceed to the helipad.

Leaving Storage

When a stored helicopter receives a new transport assignment:

1. The required attachment type is detected in advance.
2. The helicopter’s personal stored module becomes a container, tank, or log carrier.
3. The hangar door opens.
4. The helicopter taxis to the center of the helipad.
5. The rotor reaches full operating speed.
6. The helicopter takes off vertically.
7. It climbs above the building.
8. It flies to its own stored attachment.
9. The cable and cargo rig descend.
10. The static attachment remains visible until pickup.
11. The static model is removed.
12. The suspended attachment appears.
13. The winch retracts.
14. The helicopter continues to its actual transport job.

Parallel Helicopter Service

Helicopters no longer use the exclusive ground-vehicle queue at cargo buildings.

Version 0.8.0 allows:

• Multiple helicopters to load simultaneously
• Multiple helicopters to unload simultaneously
• Multiple helicopters to refuel simultaneously
• Regular trucks to continue using the vanilla queue
• Helicopters to operate without blocking ground vehicles

Bugs Fixed Compared with Version 0.5.0

The following fixes apply to helicopter systems that already existed in version 0.5.1.

They do not describe the new heliport building.

Cargo Attachment Fixes

• Fixed wood cargo using the standard container instead of the log carrier
• Fixed liquid transport jobs using the wrong attachment model
• Added early detection of the next pickup type
• Fixed a liquid tank briefly changing into a standard container
• Fixed attachments disappearing when the transported amount was zero or partially transferred
• Fixed duplicate attachment models appearing during visual transitions
• Fixed stale render state hiding a valid container or tank
• Improved attachment positioning beneath the new helicopter model
• Fixed the cargo spider and container being offset from each other
• Fixed cargo lowering along the helicopter’s rotated local axis instead of world vertical
• Fixed the cargo model sinking below the target surface
• Improved the calculation between the hoist point and the bottom of the cargo model

Flight Fixes

• Added safer high-speed terrain waypoint handling
• Improved altitude correction at accelerated game speed
• Fixed altitude updates becoming too slow when the simulation delta was close to zero
• Improved clearance over factories and tall structures
• Fixed visual altitude lag behind the helicopter’s simulation position
• Improved vertical movement consistency during loading and unloading
• Fixed helicopters changing position after pausing and unpausing the game

Job and Queue Fixes

• Helicopters no longer reserve the exclusive truck queue
• Multiple helicopters can now service the same building simultaneously
• Fixed queued helicopter jobs blocking regular ground vehicles
• Fixed the next-load type being detected too late
• Fixed helicopter job-state detection briefly reporting a working helicopter as idle
• Fixed old navigation targets interfering with a newly assigned transport job

Save and State Fixes

• Cleared helicopter landing state when loading another save
• Cleared cargo-ground state when loading another save
• Cleared next-load state when loading another save
• Cleared vehicle-ID-based state when a helicopter despawns
• Fixed recycled vehicle IDs inheriting old helicopter state
• Fixed stale attachment visibility surviving a save change

Rendering and Compatibility Fixes

• Fixed helicopter light-controller material lookup errors
• Fixed attachment rendering overload detection
• Fixed temporary diagnostic log spam
• Removed misleading initialization warnings
• Fixed duplicate prototype registration errors
• Improved compatibility with future game method changes
• Added all required ParticleSystem and physics modules to release builds
• Fixed colliders or particle systems being removed from AssetBundles
• Fixed a Harmony initialization race during delayed save loading
• Fixed a loading crash reported under Linux and Steam Proton
• Harmony patches now wait until the game finishes scene initialization

Summary

Compared with version 0.5.0, version 0.8.0 adds:

• A new heavy-lift helicopter model
• A completely new Heliport ATC Complex
• Helicopter production
• Two animated assembly bays
• Storage for 20 helicopters
• Automated landing and departure queues
• Intelligent distribution between multiple heliports
• A dedicated container and tank platform
• Automated attachment lowering, stacking, storage, and retrieval
• Parallel helicopter loading and unloading
• Faster helicopter production
• Numerous fixes to flight, cargo rendering, job handling, saving, and compatibility
  
  Helicopter model based on “Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane” by helijah, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Modified and optimized for this mod.

Cargo Helicopter 0.5.0

• Cargo-aware slung loads — fluids now ride in a pressure tank, timber as a log bundle, everything else in the container (with the product icon).
• The right load already shows on the way to fetch it, not only on arrival.
• Land to refuel — the helicopter lands, spools its rotor down, refuels and takes off.
• Idle helicopters land instead of hovering in the air forever.
• Weather — helicopters crab into a crosswind, and the slung load is blown downwind and sways in gusts.
• Altitude separation — helicopters on the same route fly their own altitude lanes instead of stacking into one blob.
• Landing API for helipad/HQ mods (built with Gameplay++'s helicopter HQ in mind).
• Fixed helicopters freezing in the air when a building/container was deleted mid-transfer.
• Fixed fluids never loading.
• Fixed cargo transferring mid-air at 2x/3x game speed.
• Fixed T2/T3 helicopters scarring the terrain.
• The "vehicles can't reach" warning is no longer silenced colony-wide.
• Improved landing/takeoff (raised-pad height, auto-takeoff, no upward snap).
• Cut per-frame load and allocations with hundreds of vehicles on the map.
• The mod self-heals on save/load (fixes the "stop flying after a second load" bug).

Three helicopter tiers

The helicopter is no longer a single do-everything machine. There are now three, each built at its own vehicle depot tier and unlocked by the same research that unlocks that depot — exactly like trucks.

For reference — vanilla trucks: T1 carries 20 at 0.44 fuel/min, T2 carries 60 at 1.07, T3 carries 180 at 2.25.

Balance pass

Flight was free. It isn't any more.

The old helicopter carried 90 — one and a half times a T2 truck — while burning exactly a T2 truck's fuel, and it ignored mountains, rivers, buildings and traffic on top of that. It was strictly better than every ground vehicle in the game.

The new rule is simple: a helicopter hauls the same as the truck of its class, but burns roughly double its fuel. You are paying for the terrain you get to ignore, not getting a free upgrade. This mirrors how the vanilla amphibious truck is balanced — it carries 44% of a T3 while drinking 80% of its fuel, because it can cross water.

Late-game trucks stay relevant. Helicopters remain the answer for the places trucks can't reach.

Three container models

Each tier now slings its own shipping container — red, blue and yellow — so you can read a helicopter's tier at a glance from across the map. All three are new low-poly models with full PBR texturing (normal + metallic maps), roughly a third of the polygons of the old container and a quarter of the texture memory. All three tiers together are lighter than the single container from 0.3.0.

New icons

All three tiers have their own hand-made icons in the vehicle depot, each showing the helicopter with its container colour.

Fixes

• Helicopters stopped flying after a second save load in the same session (they crawled along the ground — and along the sea floor under water — until the game was restarted). Hardened against all three possible causes: the flight patch now re-installs itself on every load if something removed it, the helicopter is identified by prototype ID instead of a reference that could go stale, and the terrain is read live from the aircraft itself instead of a cached service that could be null or belong to the previous game.
• Terrain resolve failures no longer silently ground the whole fleet. Previously, if the terrain service failed to resolve on load, every helicopter fell back to ground movement with no warning.
• Landing support for HQ / helipad mods. A small public API (CargoHelicopter.Api.HeliApi) lets other mods clear a helicopter to land: it reels the container up against the hull, descends gently, kicks up a dust storm and spools its rotor down — and on release, spools back up before lifting off. Primitives only, so it can be called by reflection as a soft dependency. Built for Gameplay++'s upcoming helicopter HQ, but open to anyone.
• Landing/takeoff dust — the rotor downwash now kicks up a heavy dust cloud on touchdown and lift-off, fading as the rotor spins down.
• Per-aircraft state is cleared between save loads, so a stale landing order can no longer affect an unrelated helicopter.
• Assorted internal hardening around save/load: nothing carries over from a previous game any more.

• New 3D model — Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane (medium poly for performance)
• Cargo containers that are winched down to the ground for loading/unloading — the helicopter hovers while the cable does the work
• Product icon on the container shows what's being carried
• Bulk materials (coal, gravel, etc.) are now visible in transit too
• New flight & cargo physics and animations — realistic banking, pendulum swing on the sling, downwash spray over water
• Lots of bug fixes

Big update, focused on how it flies and how it looks. Huge thanks to everyone testing — and especially @Vladovlak, whose notes drove most of this. 🙌

@Vladovlak — replying to your points:

• 🌀 Rotor — you were right, it read like a gunship. It's now six blades on a smaller rotor disc, and it spins correctly.
• 🌊 "Turning into a submarine" — fixed. Over deep water it now stays above the surface instead of sinking.
• 🍿 "Jumping over the bridge like popcorn" — the altitude is completely reworked: the heli looks at the highest point along its route ahead, climbs to it gradually while flying (no last-second leaps), holds a steady cruise height over the mountains and stacks, then descends smoothly near the destination.

What's new in this update:

• ✈️ Flight altitude fully rewritten — smooth and route-aware; no more popcorn over mountains, cliffs, bridges or tall buildings
• 🌊 Flies above water instead of submerging
• 🏭 Climbs over tall buildings / smokestacks instead of clipping through them
• 🌀 New rotor: six blades, correct size
• 📦 The real cargo hangs on the sling and is now frame-locked to the heli (no more jitter)
• 🖱️ You can now click the helicopter itself to select it (proper hitbox)
• ⏸️ Freezes correctly on pause (no drifting, rotor stops)
• 🖼️ Custom icon in the vehicle factory
• ⚡ Faster, with a higher cruise altitude
• 🔕 Hides the false "building can't be reached by vehicles" warning while a heli is around

Still a test build — please keep the feedback coming, it genuinely shapes the mod. If anything still looks off (altitude, cargo, the model), drop a screenshot and I'll fix it. Thanks again! 🚁